Involvement of macrophage migration inhibitory factor in cancer and novel therapeutic targets.

Oncol Lett

Laboratory of Anatomy and Cellular Biology, Faculty of Medicine and Pharmacy, University of Mons, Mons 7000, Belgium; Department of Otorhinolaryngology, Faculty of Medicine, Free University of Brussels, Brussels 1000, Belgium.

Published: October 2016

Macrophage migration inhibitory factor (MIF) was originally identified in 1966 by Bloom and Bennett as a pro-inflammatory cytokine involved in the inhibition of macrophage motility. Since then, studies have investigated the functional contribution of this pro-inflammatory cytokine in several immune diseases, including rheumatoid arthritis and lupus erythematous. Recently, MIF has been reported to be involved in a variety of neoplastic diseases. The present review discusses previous cancer research studies that have investigated the involvement of MIF in carcinogenesis, disease prognosis, tumor cell proliferation and invasion, and tumor-induced angiogenesis. Finally, potential therapeutic approaches based on the use of MIF antagonists and neutralizing antibodies are examined. The review concludes that MIF could be a good prognostic biomarker in several types of cancer, but also that the inhibition of MIF could represent a novel therapy against cancer.

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Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5038338PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.3892/ol.2016.4929DOI Listing

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